As a buddhist, following the BBR version of the 4 noble truths, the 4th of which is the 8-fold path, I have encountered the following dilema.
I found lendingclub and decided to invest heavily in that as a way to help me and the borrowers by providing funds at less interest than the credit card companies and banks. I was planning to invest an amount each month and then in 8-10 years, retire, and live on the interest payments.
Since I came up with that plan, I found out that charging interest is a sin. Further investigation of that statement led me to believe that people wanting an item before they have saved up enough to buy it out right is feeding off their attachement to said item and therefore enabling them to endure suffering.
What do you believe a buddhist should do with extra capital to provide for the future that doesn’t violate the 4 noble truths and the 8-fold path?
I’m really not sure. I can see your point (you feel making money off of people paying interest to buy consumer goods is against your religious beliefs), but I do not know of good alternative investments.
Is it possible to invest in a high dividend green mutual fund, or rental property? I wouldn’t take investment advice from me but I’m just brainstorming.
On another note, have you read anything about the overlap between buddhism and neuroscience? It is pretty exciting. Neuroscientists are starting to figure out which brain areas are activated or suppressed among advanced practitoners. Plus we also have electronic technologies that can help with meditation. We have mind machines, binaural beat CDs, heart rate variability coherence biofeedback devices, biotuners, balance holograms, etc.
What about business investments ala Dragon’s Den. In it, people come to weathly individuals with a business proposition and ask for X amount of money for a Y% stake. You can choose to help only businesses that you think would do good for the world, I suppose. And it’s not interest but literally a stake in their business (unless you get bought out). Maybe the investment club can think about something like that?
I think we need more background information. Can you relate the 4 noble truths and the 8 fold path?
For example, you’ve told us that charging interest is a sin. It’s not just a sin in Buddhist setting. It’s also not acceptable for a person who is practicing Islam.
There is a Mutual Fund family–The Amana Funds–that invest using Islamic practices. Because the funds held no financial stocks when that market melted down last year they held up better than most other funds. They also do not invest in gambling, pornography, anything that has anything to do with pork or pork products…you get the idea.
So help us with a little more with the direction you need to go.
Life is Suffering (Dukkha):
Birth is suffering, aging is suffering, not getting what you want is suffering, losing what you have is suffering.
Suffering’s Origin: Suffering comes from craving and attachment
Cessation of Suffering: If you stop craving and attachment, you stop suffering.
The Way / the eightfold path.
The eightfold path leads to cessation of craving: The eightfold path is the basic map of buddhism, consisting of right view, intention, speech, action, livelihood, effort, mindfulness, concentration.
As a Buddhist, I see your dilemma. However, I’m not sure that I completely agree that making money by charging interest is by definition a sin. If I’m loaning you money so you can buy bling, sure, I’m enabling your attachment. If I’m loaning you money so that you can build a well for your village, I’m not seeing the problem.
Another thought- why not investing in ethical companies? If they do well, you, an owner of the company, make money when you sell.
Every Buddhist I’ve met has said that the ideal is what you strive for, not what is prescribed. If you can benefit others, and the net benefit is you make a bit of money, then it is just that you have not, and perhaps cannot, yet achieve perfection.
Because really, unless you want to stand in the street with a bowl, you’re gonna need a retirement fund that actually stacks up to inflation…
ETA:
What if they pay a dividend? What if they invest in a company that makes interest?
(I’ve spent a lot of time in Buddhist countries, and I’ve never seen a Buddhist short of a monk or lama who actually cared about this sort of thing!)
I agree, and as a buddhist guy, I’ve got to say, the relationship between interest and sin has only occurred to me when I think about credit cards.
I would like to ask the OP for some further information: Who’s opinion is it that interest is inherently sinful? Can you give some citations or further information about how widespread this perception is? I certainly don’t recall it from my readings of primary Buddhist sources, although that may be because people like Milarepa didn’t spend a lot of time investing.
Surely any provision for the future is a consequence of craving and attachment–if you crave nothing and are attached to nothing, the future ceases to be a concern of any kind. Extra capital beyond what is required for your need today–this moment, even–should be dispersed…immediately, unless you are too attached to it.
The old testament contains passages that say not to charge interest (usury) when lending to your brother as you don’t want to add to your brother’s suffering. Also Islam, as mentioned by Doug Bowe, doesn’t allow charging interest and they “get around” it with various means. One of which is letting the ‘bank’ know you want to buy a certain item. The bank buys the item and then resells it to you for a higher price. The bank owns the item, and lets you use it, until you pay the price and the fee. So it isn’t “interest” per say.
And what 3rd Dimension said about the loaning money for bling would be enabling is what started me thinking about the whole right action issue in the first place.
The rental property seems like a buddhist way to go, providing shelter, the rent would have to be very reasonable.
I see your point and I disagree. If the point of view of having no attachments is carried to extremes, we would soon die of starvation or dehydration laying in a puddle of our own excrement.
I accept your disagreement, but simply offer that every religion is inherently hypocritical. Whether one needs to take a given construct “to extremes” to uncover that hypocrisy is not a matter of interpretation but rather of accepting a teaching at face value versus some other “interpretation.” Once the face value–the plain-speak language–of a position is discarded as “extreme” all other possible “interpretations” become arguments of degree and not the core value being proposed by the religion.
My asceticism is your excess.
When Siddharta left behind his claim to his kingdom, I am unaware that he reserved enough capital for retirement. If the Buddha is not the role model for the 4 noble truths and the 8-fold path, then to whom would you appeal for justification around craving a more secure future?
I am not suggesting what you should do; I am only passing along what Bhuddist teaching requires you to do. And you would be correct insisting that most nominal Bhuddists do not follow that teaching. Back to the first sentence of this post…
Oops…it’s late and I’m tired. I actually forgot to make my key point. Geezer.
Anyway:
It’s no more a sin–and no greater violation of the noble truths–to charge interest than it is to prepare for retirement.
No belief system is free of hypocrisy. So leave your investments alone, if you made them in good conscience, and try to avoid pasting on after-the-fact clarifications about religious teachings. Life will be simpler and it already sounds like your conscience works properly.
In my understanding of the basic Buddhist tenets, they are to be learned, taken to heart with study in what those who have devoted in depth devotion to the study of those precepts have left, or teachers who embody the precepts at a high level, and then, take that foundation and deal with the life you have by taking responsibility and viewing the time and circumstances you live in clearly, making good choices in life based on the rational approach of an enlightened person who detailed his method of doing that.
So, if you live by the basic tenets, you should be able, with skillful means, to apply them to whatever system you live in, and make the best choices. I’m no financial wiz, but I don’t see why you couldn’t live within Buddhist precepts and live within our present financial society. The point is to become unattached to any system in an ego sense; when you accomplish that at a good level, selfish application of the system won’t exist, for you at least.
There are a couple of recent books by Westen Buddhists who are adept with financial matters, that detail their adaptation of practice into their particular discipline of money matters… do a Google /Amazon search… and, they look interesting and sincere. One aspect of Buddhism I greatly admire is it’s adaptability to different cultures, and we are now seeing it’s great diaspora to the US in the past three decades. Adapting to the US culture of money, as it is a religion substitute here, with a way to make that more conscienscious, is a good effort.
Born and practicing(occasionally) buddhist from a theravadic buddhist country…I’ve never heard that charging interest is a sin. Infact there is bank in my home country which got whole load of monks as the stockholders and it gives interest just like any other bank.
Everything depends on your “intention” and “thoughts”. If you are investing in order to get an interest by providing a less than ethical service, you will be committing a sin.